Lesser Known Reason Big Boxes Cause Sprawl and Food Deserts

In an unsealed lawsuit by the FTC that was dropped by the Trump Administration, evidence was revealed that PepsiCo has been conspiring with WalMart to keep the price of Pepsi’s soft drinks lower at the big box store for the last ten years. Stacy Mitchell of ILSR shared this on Bluesky.

Why does this matter to us urban policy types Jeff? Well we recently interviewed Stacy about a piece she wrote in the Atlantic discussing how the Great Depression era Robinson-Patman Act hasn’t been enforced since the Reagan administration.  Robinson-Patman was passed to keep larger companies from creating disadvantages on price with smaller stores and competitors.

Lack of enforcement, Stacy argues more than anything else, has led to food deserts in our communities and forced people to transport themselves further from their neighborhoods to access big box stores that have knocked out competitors over the last 40 years.

So when a company like WalMart makes a deal with Pepsi to keep prices low at their stores only, it means more driving and collision risk, more long bus rides, more food insecurity, and more emissions. As Stacy notes, many arguments against enforcing Robinson-Patman suggest that we have all benefited from lower prices. But with all of these other impacts to our communities, I don’t believe that’s true.

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